Servers supporting mission-critical applications (i.e. financial transactions, database access, corporate intranets, etc.) must exchange traffic across data networks. Moreover, additional time sensitive applications (i.e. Voice over IP, Video) need to be carried across networks. Additionally, networks need the ability to scale performance to handle large numbers of end user requests without creating unwanted delays.
Network load balancing distributes traffic to multiple paths inside the network, each path going across different network equipment (Routers). Network load balancing transparently partitions the end user requests among the network paths.
Currently, the network routing protocols send traffic according to the shortest path between the end user and the application. Usually, the shortest path is determined based on static criteria such as least number of intermediate devices in the path (less hops), or larger capacity links (in terms of bandwidth). As the number of end users utilizing an application increases, the shortest path becomes congested.
MultiProtocol Label Switching (MPLS) refers to a mechanism which directs and transfers data between Wide Area Networks (WANs) nodes with high performance, regardless of the content of the data. MPLS belongs to the family of packet-switched networks. MPLS makes it easy to create “virtual links” between nodes on the network, regardless of the protocol of their encapsulated data. It can be used to carry many different kinds of traffic, including IP packets, as well as native ATM, SONET, and Ethernet frames. It is a highly scalable, protocol independent, data-carrying mechanism. Packet-forwarding decisions are made solely on the contents of the labels, without the need to examine the packet.
This allows one to create end-to-end circuits across any type of transport medium, using any protocol. The primary benefit is to eliminate dependence on a particular Data Link Layer technology, such as ATM, frame relay, SONET or Ethernet, and eliminate the need for multiple Layer 2 networks to satisfy different types of traffic. MPLS operates at an OSI Model layer that is generally considered to lie between traditional definitions of Layer 2 (Data Link Layer) and Layer 3 (Network Layer), and thus is often referred to as a “Layer 2.5” protocol. It was designed to provide a unified data-carrying service for both circuit-based clients and packet-switching clients which provide a datagram service model.
In MultiProtocol Label Switching networks, each service provider defines his own specific Quality of Service ‘QOS’ policy over its MPLS backbone. The mapping between the nature of traffic (real-time voice over IP, video streaming, http transactional, unidirectional, connection oriented, connection less) and the QOS policies of each service provider depends on the service provider QOS policy and is statically configured on each backbone edge router.
A drawback of such mapping is that it static and cannot be adjusted automatically on the service provider backbone usage and/or for any QOS policy modifications, thereby causing congestion.
Moreover, the real time and on-demand solutions massively deployed today at end user sites may conduct that a QOS policy provided by a service provider be considered rapidly obsolete.
The present invention solves the aforementioned problems.